5th Session- FRIDAY 4/1/2011

Today, Makia and I started out with reading through her Microsoft Office 2007 computer's book. I made it my goal to look for a pattern in words that seem to trip up Makia.

/w/ sounds in particular are difficult for Makia.

I found /wh/, /sh/ and /sp/ consonant digraphs give more difficultly and she has master the /th/ and /ch/ sounds very quickly.

When examining this pattern further, I asked Makia whether she had the /th/ sound in her language. I was curious to see if this sound was easier because of her L1 native language. Indeed, Makia started uttering many words the began with the /th/ sound. She said that it was a very common sound in her native language. I was excited to make the connection because is shows the growth in my own learning of recognizing how L1 can reflect and effect much success in L2 learning.

She also clarified the differences and dialects in her country...

Dari-Afghanistan

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Urdu- Pakistan

At work or to make a purchase, Makia uses Dari. Dari she said is a more formal way of speaking. At home, Makia uses Hazargi as a less formal way of communicating with her relatives and parents.

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We discussed words like /wh/ as in when and many other /wh/ words such as what, when, where, why, whose...

The word /sp/ as in (specific) Makia seemed to struggle with. I reinforced with forming a complete sentence, and relating it to the word (Pacific).

I explained the words suit vs. suite vs. sweet.

suit---I.P.A.- [sut]- (emphasis on the /u/ sound) is used to reference men's clothing or a suit in a deck of cards.

suite- with the silent e also pronounced the same way as sweet. I explained the context in which we would find suite. I explained how in a hotel you may have a basic room, or a suite which is more expensive. (Ex: Suite 2A vs. Room 2A) Makia understood this connection and the distinction between suite vs. sweet.

Makia had trouble with the word: supervisor [su pər vaɪ zər]

I explained that the /s/ sound is more of a /z/ sound. She immediately corrected her error.

I found the /v/ is also difficult for Makia such as the word developer.

When I used a different teaching strategy, such as syllable segmenting, Makia seemed to understand it better.

de-vel-o-per when clapping and hitting the desk with our hand, Makia began pronouncing the /v/ rather than skipping it like she had done before.

A large part of our lesson was spent pronouncing the word necessary right.

Makia could not make the distinction with the last syllable (sary) she kept saying (sory) as in accessory.

Makia was beginning to get frustrated because she could not hear the difference.

I felt like my pronunciation was confusing her so I outsourced to dictionary.com where I could allow here to hear another voice pronounce this word. Again, she still could not hear the distinction.

In the word necessary the I.P.A. translation is: [nɛs ə sɛri]. Without getting into a full complex conversation of why I was using I.P.A. to help her pronounce the [sɛri] portion of the word necessary I had her repeat word such as bread and bed that have the /ɛ/ sound. Once doing that and again repeating accessory from necessary, she saw the difference! ***That was like the teaching "AHAA" moment where the light bulb goes on! I was so happy, and so was she. She was so happy that she continued to pronounce the word (necessary) to ensure that she was doing it right.

Additionally we talked about aspirated letters in the English alphabet and not aspirated letters.

I explained...

/b/ /t/ /k/ are aspirated with a puff/burst of air... I gave examples such as: bat, tap, kit

/p/ /d/ /g/ are non-aspirated consonants... I gave examples such as: pop, dog, goat.

I reinforced this with a paper in front of my mouth so she could see the difference between a word like bat vs. dog. The paper moves when you say /b/at vs. /d/og. I noticed she started to talk lower almost when pronouncing the word /dog/, I explained that it is not that we lower our voices, it is that when we encounter the /b/ /t/ /k/ sounds we put more of an emphasis on that particular letter-sound in a word.

Again, we discussed many other words that came about in conversation when moving about the reading in her computers book.

We ended our discussion when going over number placement such as twentieth and eightieth where Makia was struggling with the /ieth/ sound. She is aware of her error, and put this and many of the other things discussed in her notebook of things to work on.

Before leaving, we reinforced the concepts we had touched upon in the session. I encouraged her to always put a word in context to form a syntactical structure. I find that this method helped her as it took her mind off of focusing on the actual pronunciation. She more naturally was able to correct her mistake by the second or third time.

Again, much of my approach with Makia is in regards to the Negative Feedback approach in SLA instruction. When stumbling upon a word, I point it out in text without saying it and asked Makia to repeat the word. Once repeating it, I assessed whether she was just reading too quickly and pronounced it the 2nd time without any errors; or I pointed out her error explicitly and went through the above methods listed throughout this blog to help her come to understand her error.

In the next session Makia would like to combine the pragmatic competence instruction focused in the 3rd & 4th session with today's session. We plan to either hold our session outside as we walk around campus having a natural conversation brought on by the scenery, or sit in a cafe setting where we can hold a normal conversation in a setting. Of course, throughout our session, I will point out her errors, and it will be like any other teaching session.